{"id":22744,"date":"2025-04-10T11:55:29","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T17:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/kathleen-sgamma-withdraws-nomination-to-lead-bureau-of-land-management\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T17:55:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T17:55:29","slug":"kathleen-sgamma-withdraws-nomination-to-lead-bureau-of-land-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/kathleen-sgamma-withdraws-nomination-to-lead-bureau-of-land-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathleen Sgamma withdraws nomination to lead Bureau of Land Management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kathleen
Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance, speaks during a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on America\u2019s Energy and Mineral potential on Feb. 8, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mariam Zuhaib\/Associated Press file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Coloradan Kathleen Sgamma has withdrawn her nomination to head the Bureau of Land Management. The announcement came Thursday morning from Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah at the start of a committee hearing to discuss several nominees to public lands posts.<\/p>\n

Sgamma leads the Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based oil and gas industry group, but announced she was stepping down when she was nominated for the BLM post. No reason was given for her withdrawal. However, it was recently revealed that after President Donald Trump\u2019s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Sgamma wrote a highly critical memo to her organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disgusted by the violence witnessed yesterday and President Donald Trump\u2019s role in spreading misinformation that incited it. I\u2019m disgusted he discredited all the good work he did reorienting the judiciary back toward respect for the rule of law and constitution by dishonoring the vote of the People and the rulings of those very same judges on his number challenges,\u201d she wrote in the memo, which was revealed Tuesday by the investigative outlet Documented.<\/p>\n

Sgamma concluded that Trump\u2019s 2020 electoral defeat provided \u201chope for a resurgence of sanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one of his first moves after being sworn in, President Donald Trump pardoned virtually all participants in the storming of the Capitol, and since then he has moved to punish those who opposed his false claims about the 2020 election, most recently by instructing the Justice Department to investigate two members of his last administration who defended the accuracy of the vote.<\/p>\n

Sgamma helped author the section of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership. The policy guidebook called for reversing President Biden\u2019s \u201cwar on fossil fuels\u201d by ending regulations meant to slow climate change and restoring oil and gas leases on public lands. It also recommended that the federal government return BLM headquarters to Grand Junction, a move President Donald Trump enacted in his first term before former President Biden reversed the decisions.<\/p>\n

Sgamma has downplayed the role of fossil fuels in driving global warming. In 2015, she said oil and gas leasing on federal lands has an \u201cinfinitesimal impact on climate.\u201d She also argued natural gas has provided \u201cmore climate benefits than wind and solar combined\u201d by displacing coal-fired power plants.<\/p>\n

In an interview with CPR News before her nomination, Sgamma said she saw the administration\u2019s energy agenda as part of getting back to regular order.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoving forward with lease sales, moving forward with permitting on federal lands, moving forward with completing environmental analysis,\u201d she said. \u201cWe would expect the Trump administration to move forward and get those leases issued and development proceeding on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sgamma added that Trump\u2019s moves would \u201ccounterbalance the swing in one direction by the Biden Administration\u201d into renewables such as wind and solar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were promoted, overpromoted, during the Biden Administration,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Environmental groups were relieved to see Sgamma withdraw her nomination. Aaron Weiss, the deputy director for the Center of Western Priorities, said his organization was disappointed that Sgamma declined to release a list of Western Energy Alliance members before her hearing, which could have helped Congress evaluate any conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

He suspects, however, that her decision to affirm the 2020 election results sunk her nomination.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know the one thing President Donald Trump can\u2019t stand is when people acknowledge that reality. It certainly seems that\u2019s what has done her in,\u201d Weiss said.<\/p>\n

In response to the news of her withdrawal, GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd said in a statement, \u201cKathleen has always been an effective leader for the energy sector. I know she will continue to be a fierce advocate for the President\u2019s energy dominance agenda, and I look forward to continuing to work with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

CPR\u2019s Caitlyn Kim contributed reporting to this story.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

given, but a four-year-old memo she wrote criticizing Trump recently came to light<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,265,195],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-politics","tag-u-s-bureau-of-land-management"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22744"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}